


Her Skin To Fire

by 13letters



Series: fare thee well, oh, honey [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: "that thing you do with your tongue", Death, F/M, Insight, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Season/Series 06 Spoilers, free folk, in memory of, she really didn't deserve this, they never should have left that cave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7278760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's free as a bird and strong and alive, or at least -- she was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Skin To Fire

_"It's you and me that matters to me and you,"_ she had said, and she wasn't stupid, she told him point-blank, the sharp end of an arrow, he hadn't stopped being a Crow when he walked into Mance's camp, she hadn't quit being a Free Folk then either.

The things they do for love, she didn't put three arrows in him to tell him she loved him. He already fucking knew that. She took her bow in her hands because this was the price of liberation, there wasn't anything glorious in dying when blood stains the snow red, this was word against word. _When we Wildlings say we'll do something, we do it,_ and these are the prices they pay.

 

The first thing she'd killed as a girl was a hare.

South of the Wall, they called the season summer, they sang songs and they waded in crystal water, they wove pretty flowers into crowns to adorn their flowing hair. A woman was being handed flowers then, and a blue winter rose started to grow out of the big ice wall, and Ygritte was snuggled warm in ice encrusted furs. Winter came and went and she stood in a giant's footprint, she looked upon the Wall and it didn't kill her, she was free as a bird and strong and alive.

To prove she was fierce, to make the man she called papa laugh, she bit into the rabbit raw and choked against a bloody smile, grinned with both her front teeth gone and her eyes bright. She got a new bow after that, 'cause if she was going to be a huntress, she had to quit playing around with sticks.

 

The second animal she ever killed was a man, but it didn't send lightning through her veins and jolt her heart. It didn't feel like recompense or justice or what was right.

It was just easy.

 

"Ygritte," he says, and he fucking smiles at her like they never should have left that cave. His sword arm lowers, but she pulls her bowstring taut, she aims for his heart 'cause men like this, they do or they lie six feet under the ground. They're burned at a pyre. She hadn't cried in so long, the salt in her eyes startles her like he does.

She's a doe blinking before the shot before she'll sprint to safety, he's the wolf with the pointed teeth come to devour her whole, _oh_ , fuck, how she'll laugh from high up in the skies when the boy that killed her kills him, too.

She'll laugh, and it won't be funny at all, she'll remember how tears taste 'cause they'll be so frequent, her poor beautiful sad Jon Snow, all that time and he can't lay her to rest. She should have smiled at him more when she had the chance.

 

It's an old grieving trick, a bit of insanity that comes with loss, with the heartbreak that sounds like the beloved's name in the air around them. They can't stop looking for them that's passed on, but when the wind is gentle enough to caress his face like she would, not bitingly cold, only achingly gentle as his hair's tousled, his lips chap -- that's her. He'll feel her.

 

The second Lyanna Stark laid eyes on Rhaegar Targaryen, oh, fate was introducing Jon to Ygritte, promising this beckoning of an emotion that's going to outlast and burn. Not cities to the ground, but not just her body either.

When the arrow lodges into her skin, time doesn't stop. There isn't an instant of clarity, she doesn't see all her life pass in a heartbeat of trivial moments of her life: losing her mother, standing where the first men stood, staring eye to eye in a face off against a wolf over her dinner, laughing so hard her tears were happy and ice on her cheeks, seeing that red comet in the sky and knowing this is going to be so, so much more. There won't be anything poetic about it.

People just die.

 

The arrow lodges into her skin.

She was going to apologize to him; she was going to say that she loved him.

She was going to tell him it was alright, they didn't have to agree, all wars are the same war, they can fight and fight and fight because they're children and freedom sounds like _recompense_ , they're children and on their lines of the battlefield, they do what they have to so they can sleep at night without comrades pulling blades to their throats, they're children that -- they're children.

They're both just children.

And they fell in love and to the fucking hells with the rest of the world.

She's dying, and the anguish on his face, it silences her declarations and this truth she's got 'cause dying isn't the time for that. What's it matter when you had a lifetime to work it out and couldn't?

What's it matter when there's an arrow cutting her up? He's holding her in his arms, she's gasping for breath, she's feeling this arrow split her open, but they're not in Castle Black anymore.

 

They're in that cave where the water glistens on the stones like stars. And he's got stars for eyes, his smile is like a rainbow. His chest is like a tree trunk holding her up, his spine is like a cobbled road, and effortless, without thinking, she starfishes her fingers up his ribs. The waning crescent moons they are, she melts into him like the wax of a candle, pours herself into him like sugar, but that's when she realizes she's hiding. That's when she realizes this is going to end.

 

Before she was a woman but while she was too old to be a little girl with all she'd witnessed and seen, she had to know what it was like to have to savor her food. She knew what it was to feel like her dinner was always going to be stolen out of her hands, like her very breath was going to be stolen from her.

 

"I'm going to die," she tells him lowly, like she's reclaiming this for herself, though, 'cause everything that's predestined and fated -- not this. Not them.

With her cheek pressed to his collarbone, the fit of him isn't how she remembers, but she's lost a lot of blood. She feels her skin cold and lifeless, blood-stained, but her flesh is shining, she's whole where he touches.

"So am I," he whispers, dragging his lips across her hairline, between her brows, down the slope of her nose. He inhales sharply like it's hilarious, this future in store for them, but the shuddering of his chest, this is what crying feels like when it reverberates from skin to skin.

She doesn't want to ask him, but she's never been one for fear. She's brazen and she's fierce and still, at least for right now with their heart beats lasping together, she's alive. "When?"

"Not soon enough," he answers. Not right or wrong at all, just easy. "I won't see you when it happens, though." He sounds so grave, like his shoulders carry a weight for him they hadn't when he was a Free Folk, when he was laughing and he was hers, and he -- he's older than she's known him. She sees it at once now that she's looking.

He doesn't stop her from tracing the broader lines of his shoulders, the scars on his chest he hadn't had when she'd uncovered his skin here ages ago. _I'll be ready_ , he's saying, for death, and she takes his face in her hand, she feels the thickness of his beard that makes him more man than that boy she loved, the boy that had never been with a girl, and she undoes that worn piece of leather that binds his hair back. She feels him breathe her in like she's got his heart in her hands, like just a touch and he's dissembled, "Ygritte," he chokes, _stay_.

It's so wet when she kisses his cheeks, his chin, the corners of his mouth. "It's alright," she tries to say, "it's you and me," but no sounds are coming out of her mouth and she feels it so acutely how his touch once set her soul to fire is now this pain wrenching her apart. She can't move in his arms at all,

" _Ygritte_ , wake up, stay with me, come back, we don't have to leave this cave."

 

"I know I love you. I know you love me," he's saying, and the past does repeat itself, they're crying this time, too.

 

"I'm not ready," he's sobbing into her hair, broken gasps, but blood is coming out of her mouth, the cold sets into her bones and the motion of him rocking her -- it isn't there. She doesn't feel it anymore. She doesn't feel the cold either. "I'm not ready, don't go," he begs. His heart could stop now; hers has, "Breathe, _breathe_ ," he's choking, holding her to him so tight, covering the wound with his hands to stop the bleeding, but she can't.

She's lying still in his arms. She's dead.

He really doesn't know anything at all.

 

It isn't pretty or glorious or victory for either side, not really. She isn't a casualty or a liability, an accident or a compromise. She's just the winning and the losing battle in Jon Snow.

She's free as a bird and strong and alive, or at least -- she was.

Now she's standing with him, torn in two while he defends taking her north of the wall in burial, she's the wind on his cheek and in the darkness for him, she's there when there's nothing but the voices he'll hear.

Mountains will move inside his chest and her handprints will be all over them; she's loved and that's been fucking terrifying, dying was so easy, sometimes it feels like she can breathe with her mouth full of blood and her fierce grin 'cause this isn't over.

 

A blue winter rose grows outside the Wall, her eyes close for good and there's her family, there's his, there's him and the proper good-bye she didn't get to say to him, but maybe that's for the best.

Maybe.

 

When he tells her he's going to die, he does fall into her arms. 

He thinks he's ready like he has been since he lost her, but the people they lose, they come back, she rocks him in her arms and she's the first to let go when the gods will him back. 

This choice, this one is easy. Watching him walk out of the cave is easy because there's something about seeing him fierce and strong and laughing and beautiful and alive. There's something that isn't a burden in waiting. 

 

" _You're alive_ ," he whispers, stroking his fingers through her red hair, folding into her as easy as a breath. 

He's gasping, he's panting, he's being trampled and he's being suffocated in this snare of bodies a losing battle in his chest, but he's holding his head up high, he's never really lived 'till now. He takes her in his arms and they have all the world -- he doesn't feel the blood on his skin now and the pain he's in now, but she can feel it. She can see it. 

"I'm not alive," she tells him, her tongue like ash in her mouth. "Neither are you. Get up, Jon," she begs, feeling the scars on his chest, the sad lines around his eyes. "You're not ready, get up, _live_ \--"

He does. Oh, he does.


End file.
